Due to extraordinary personal commitments, WattPlot is forced to suspend parts of its operation,
effective July 1, 2018.
The impacts of this suspension are detailed below:

Downloads and trial activations for new installations will be suspended on July 1, 2018.

Email inquiries and requests for support may receive a longer than usual wait time.
(We apologize in advance.)

Limited assistance with license moves and reactivations will remain available until at least
December 31, 2018.
After that the situation will be re-evaluated.

No new releases of version 5 applications will be made, effective July 1, 2018.

About WattPlot™

WattPlot was started by Andrew Welch of Intallact in 2006. He created the tools to monitor his own OutBack
renewable energy system, since the existing only existing product was unsophisticated and not suited to his needs.
An installer saw the WattPlot software and immediately wanted to offer it to his clients. The rest is history.

Today, many hundreds of sites around the world have installed the WattPlot suite of monitoring tools, and we have a presence on every continent (including Antarctica)! WattPlot has a global reputation for sophisticated and friendly interfaces, superb documentation, and exceptional technical support. Other fly-by-night solutions have
come and gone. WattPlot remains commited to our growing client base, and users have relied on our software for
over a decade.

WattPlot still offers the most comprehensive renewable energy system monitoring tools available anywhere.
Period.

Some History

WattPlot was originally just a single program, developed in Visual Basic 6, which offered snapshot values and our
signature pen-plots for monitoring FX inverters and MX-60 charge controllers, using the serial data stream from an
original MATE. Users appreciated its rich interface, and the ability to drilldown to each second of detail.

In the early days, OutBack was very supportive of WattPlot (and a few other monitoring software developers), since
they offered a much-needed service that complemented OutBack's hardware. We offered design advice on OutBack data
stream design, and had a sub-forum on the popular OutBack User Forum where many OutBack clients shared ideas, had
questions answered, and exchanged information.

As a result, WattPlot kept pace with new OutBack hardware as it was introduced, so that software monitoring support
was never far behind the new devices. Of course, there were also advances in PC technology and communications
tools. The challenge of supporting the wide variety of old and new OutBack devices, PC operating systems, and
diverse system configurations was daunting; but WattPlot supported it all, from Windows NT to Windows 10 (and even
virtual environments on Macs, etc.).

Gradually, new features were added - often based on user requests and suggestions. These include such things
as user-definable device reporting sets, spreadsheet reports, web data file support, multiple MATE support, a TCP
Server feature, and another signature function: Automatic Actions, which allowed WattPlot to respond to system
conditions with MATE Commands, email notifications, etc. Support was added for the FLEXnet DC monitor, the
FLEXmax charge controllers, the MATE3, and the new Radian hybrid inverters.

The most significant advance came with the introduction of WattPlot version 5 in 2013, which was actually a suite
of tools written in VB.Net. WattPlot 5 represented a significant advance in the software development, which had been
redesigned from the ground up. Users could now choose from WattPlot Monitor (the next generation of the original
program), VisualMATE (a simplified animated system view), SumMATE (a non-live analysis tool for data log files), and
NetMATE (an applet providing a smart TCP Server). Other tools such as WattPlot CheckMATE (for monitoring many
MATEs in industrial settings) and WattPlot ShowMATE (for public display monitoring), had limited markets and were
never widely distributed. The WattPlot 5 tools quickly became the monitoring solution of choice for OutBack
equipment. (Even OutBack staff were using the tools!)

Unfortunately, over time, the OutBack culture changed. The company was bought out, staff came and left, and
important changes to interfaces and data formats were no longer shared. OutBack technical documentation (which
was frankly never a strength) became even more inadequate, inaccurate, and out-of-date. Our attempts to point
out serious implementation errors went unanswered. Our emails were ignored or we were told that we would have
to live with errors because they were not going to be corrected. When we let other users know of the effect
all of this was having on our software integrity and OutBack's own clients, our user sub-forum was deleted
overnight without warning, as were the sub-forums and posts of all the other frustrated developers.
Communications became very strained indeed. OutBack began relying on their own new monitoring solution
(OPTICSre) and claimed that WattPlot was now a competitor.

Today

The WattPlot software support and development stopped paying for itself some time ago, but the tools continue to evolve
and clients still receive excellent support. In 2016, WattPlot once again embarked on a new generation of
renewable energy system monitoring software. As with version 5, the core software classes were redesigned from
scratch, but this time the objectives had changed. WattPlot 6 relies exclusively on Modbus/TCP communications
and is no longer limited to OutBack equipment. The first WattPlot 6 tool is WattPlot ACKcess, whcih is now being
field tested.